Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/75

Rh thrown up into bastion and glacis, (profitable and blessed of all saints, and her, as these have since proved themselves!), or else are covered with manufactories and cabarets. Seven years old she was, then, when on his way to England from Auxerre, St. Germain passed a night in her village, and among the children who brought him on his way in the morning in more kindly manner than Elisha's convoy, noticed this one—wider-eyed in reverence than the rest; drew her to him, questioned her, and was sweetly answered That she would fain be Christ's handmaid. And he hung round her neck a small copper coin, marked with the cross. Thence-forward Genevieve held herself as "separated from the world."

6. It did not turn out so, however. Far the contrary. You must think of her, instead, as the first of Parisiennes. Queen of Vanity Fair, that was to be, sedately poor St. Phyllis, with her copper-crossed farthing about her neck! More than Nitocris was to Egypt, more than Semiramis to Nineveh, more than Zenobia to the city of palm trees—this seven-years-old shepherd maiden became to Paris and her France. You have not heard of her in that kind?—No: how should you?—for she did not lead armies, but stayed them, and all her power was in peace.